König must have arrived in Italy by 1606/07 since his copy of Veronese's Marriage at Cana was painted in Venice as early as 1607. He often adopted motifs from Venetian painting, as demonstrated in his Toilet of Bathsheba (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), whose figures derive from Domenico Tintoretto’s Susanna in her Bath (Musée du Louvre, Paris), with the architectural background evidently inspired by Veronese. But it is clearly the work of Titian, which is the inspiration for the present work. Titian’s many interpretations of the subject of Danaë were commissioned by the leading patrons of his day and can be found today in the world’s most important public collections. König’s interpretation presented here perhaps most closely follows the Kunsthistorisches version, with the shower of gold penetrating the scene from upper right.

In Greek mythology, the beautiful Danaë was locked away in a bronze tower by her father, King Acrisius of Argos. Disappointed that he and his wife Eurydice had not produced a male heir, Acrisius consulted an oracle, who informed him that his daughter’s son would kill him. The king thus banished Danaë to a tower. While no mortal could gain access to Danaë, her imprisonment was no obstacle to Jupiter and his insatiable desire. Taking the form of a shower of golden rain, Jupiter lay with Danaë and impregnated her, conceiving the boy who would become the hero Perseus. When Perseus was born Acrisius threw both mother and son out to sea in a wooden chest, but Poseidon, the sea god, calmed the choppy waters and saved them. The tragedy, of course, could not be avoided: later in life Perseus would indeed kill Acrisius, thereby affirming the inescapability of fate.

The thrilling subject matter of Danaë was often little more than an excuse to portray the female nude, but it also presented an opportunity to explore a complex and multi-layered theme. The figure of Danaë had been taken as an emblem of moral chastity, and since Perseus’ conception only took place through divine intervention, the Church was not slow in appropriating the theme as a prefiguration of the Annunciation. The tale must also be a cautionary though thinly veiled allegory: even locked away in a tower, Danaë, representative of all humankind, is helpless to resist the lure of money.

In 1614 König returned to Augsburg, where he became Dean of the Painter’s Guild in 1622 and in the following year was elected to the Greater Council of the City. The present work, dated 1616, must therefore have been painted after the artist’s return to Germany.